


Mortal

by ilgaksu



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Chronic Illness, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers is a sick bunny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-06
Updated: 2015-01-06
Packaged: 2018-03-06 10:09:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3130667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilgaksu/pseuds/ilgaksu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve is ten years old and he’s a mortal sin walking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mortal

Steve is ten years old and he’s a mortal sin walking. He knows this because the eyes of the entire classroom are on him when they come to _wrath_ in the catechism. His playground bruises smart; he bites his tongue. Steve is ten years old and knows _envy_ by rote, the strain of the days notching it further up his crooked spine. _The world can’t stop just for you, Steven_ , they tell him; and he gets that, he sure does ma’am, but can’t it slow down some? Can’t it slow down any?

 

It’s getting tougher and tougher to catch up.

 

*

 

Steve is twenty years old and he’s a jangling cacophony of ailments held together by rage. Steve is always burning, it’s blood-hot just below the skin. He watches pretty girls and doe-eyed boys dance the Lindy and it knots up tighter in his gut. He watches Bucky, kissing down the row of dames goodnight, hands cradled at their waist, crinkling violet cotton, and it hurts.

 

These are the things he doesn’t watch: his blood clotting on the last clean handkerchief, the extra notch on his belt, Bucky except for out of the corner of his eyes. He punishes his body in small, inscrutable ways, for the betrayal it served him ever since he came gasping into a world that wouldn’t slow down some, not even when he asked real nice and smiled. It’s hard to love a body that doesn’t love you back. He doesn’t go to bed when he’s tired; he runs before he can walk; _Jesus, Rogers, you’re gonna send us both to an early grave_ , the unhappy lilt to Bucky’s mouth.

 

Steve tries not to look at his mouth too often, but right now he can’t help it.

 

"Us both?" he says; in three days’ time, Steve is going to turn around at the stove and kiss him and it’s going to feel like a miracle incarnate. Someone brought him water from Lourdes once but Steve gave it away; a God that made him half-finished like this is a God he doesn’t want to buy into. In three days, Bucky is going to kiss back, eyes eager-dark, and -

 

and the knot in Steve’s gut, the grudge he places as buffer between him and the world, that anchors him here in Red Hook, sure as the tide -

 

that isn’t gonna loosen none.

 

It’s just Bucky’s gonna make the world slow down, laugh _babydoll_ into the crook of his neck and curl fingers into belt loops and -

 

It’s just Bucky’s gonna make the world stop.

 

*

 

In an unexpected and unforeseen turn of events, Steve is finally going to get his fucking audience.

 

Should’ve been more careful. When it comes to what you wish for, you just might --

 

*

 

“Get him back,” Steve snaps, “I’m going to _get him back_.”

 

Steve Rogers has always been burning. When the flames swallow him up, he thinks, kind of mildly even, that he probably should’ve expected this would be how he’d go.

 

*

 

It is not how he goes.

 

*

 

Steve has known sin; it’s been his middle name since he was born, that old wrath coating his insides like liquor, just as slick and nasty and mean. Steve has known it, has taken it with him to table and to bed, but it turns out there’s space in this big whole body for more.

 

He sees Bucky flinch when someone says Zola, Hears him mutter his serial number in his sleep, over and over. Hears the hitch in his breathing which means he’s woken up again, dragged his hand over his mouth so he won’t give their position away. His eyesight, his hearing, they are all more clear and perfect than ever, and the rage -

 

It just keeps on growing.

 

*

 

Bucky had always known how to make the world stop.

 

And so it makes sense, when he falls. It makes sense that Steve can throw himself through gunfire, through ice, through into the future and he still can’t catch up.

 

The world will not go still again until Washington.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [notallbees](notallbees.tumblr.com) and i were talking about the mortal sins in catholicism and i realised that wrath applied way too well to our favourite kid from brooklyn.
> 
> [find me on tumblr](ilgaksu.tumblr.com) and we can maybe cry about supersoldiers some more. 
> 
>  


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